Phillies firing Rob Thomson allows SF Giants to face incompetent former Dodgers manager

The Philadelphia Phillies have fired manager Rob Thomson ahead of a three-game series against the SF Giants beginning on Tuesday night. Giants fans will be delighted that Thomson's replacement is Don Mattingly, the former manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers whose incompetence brings back warm memories.

Mattingly was the manager of the Dodgers from 2011 to 2015 and served as acting manager in 2010. It's sort of hard to remember a time when Dave Roberts was not the skipper in Los Angeles, but Mattingly was the man who preceded him.

SF Giants get to face former bumbling Dodgers manager Don Mattingly

The Dodgers had a winning record in every season he was the full-time manager but they got bounced from the playoffs repeatedly and Mattingly's managerial decisions often came into question.

Giants fans loved Mattingly because he always seemed to make blunders that benefited San Francisco. The most notable example of this came in 2010 when Mattingly accidentally made two consecutive mound visits and Giants manager Bruce Bochy called him on it. The umpires agreed with Bochy and Mattingly was forced to remove his reliever from the game which led to a Giants victory. He also just seemed to constantly make strategic errors that wound up helping the Giants.

Really, Giants fans look back wistfully on the Mattingly era in LA because those were the years when the Giants dominated the rivalry and were winning World Series titles every other year. The rivalry is...just a little different these days unfortunately.

For a while, it seemed like Dave Roberts was going to continue the tradition started by Mattingly of Dodgers managers presiding over insanely talented and expensive rosters only to wet the bed in the playoffs. Roberts was great at that role for years but then he was gifted Shohei Ohtani and that changed everything.

For as much as Giants fans like to goof on Mattingly, he is still a respected manager. He had a great career as a player and even after he left the Dodgers he was the manager of the Miami Marlins for years until he got fired in 2022.

In recent years he was the bench coach for the Toronto Blue Jays and stepped down after last season to become the bench coach in Philadelphia.

Maybe that shake up is what the Phillies need after starting the season 9-19. It surely can't get any worse after a start like that especially with how much talent is on the roster. But if Mattingly has any heart at all, maybe he can challenge a call when he's out of challenges, accidentally pinch hit with the bat boy, try to remove a reliever before he faces three batters, or at the very least trip on the top step of the dugout during the next three games just to give Giants fans a brief hit of nostalgia for the days when he was managing the Dodgers poorly.

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